Method of controlling an industrial robot

A method of programming an industrial robot for machining a workpiece with the aid of a tool carried on a free extremity of a mobile robot arm, comprising th steps of:

• (a) providing a pattern with a surface conforming to the desired shape of the workpiece;
• (b) fitting the extremity of the robot arm with a sensor in the position of the machining tool;
• (c) loading a first memory with data giving the locations of a multiplicity of closely juxtaposed but discrete skeletal points on the surface of said pattern and with instructions for the guidance of said extremity along intervening lines of uniform character roughly paralleling the paths linking said points on the pattern surface;
• (d) tracing said pattern with a tip of said sensor under the control of the contents of said first memory by successively displacing said extremity across all said skeletal points with yieldable entrainment of said sensor by said extremity enabling limited movements of said tip relative to said robot arm in response to deviations of said paths from said intervening lines between adjacent skeletal points;
• and
• (e) transferring the contents of said first memory, during the tracing of the pattern in step (d) to a second memory while modifying, on the basis of the deviations represented by the relative movements of said tip, the instructions accompanying said data to establish a definite program for the guidance of a tool replacing said sensor on said extremity.